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User blog:Ace1580/The Problem of Pornography - 5.1
So here we are. We’ve explored why lust is such a widespread dilemma. Why it’s so difficult to break an addiction. And how pornography impacts you, the people around you, and your future relationships. The horizon is looking a little bleak. And the fact is, left to our own devices, their really isn’t a whole lot of room for hope. Fortunately, we aren’t alone in this battle. The reality of the situation is, God wants us to be free, he wants us to be made pure, and he wants us to be redeemed. This is not an easy process. And rest assured that, no matter how you find deliverance, freedom is a process. But how? Some of my story I’ve told bits and pieces of my story throughout this series, but this one is going to be the be the longest chunk. I had spent years in a cycle of sin, guilt, seeking repentance and a short time of purity, before coming back around. I continually asked God to give me freedom, and it never seemed to stick in the long term. I was confused. Didn’t God want me to be free from sin? Why wasn’t he helping me? At the same time, I was wondering if I hadn’t been single for so long because God was punishing me. Unfortunately, I knew what I was doing wrong, I just refused to acknowledge it. God had been telling me for some time that I needed to seek out accountability, but I had a reputation to protect and I didn’t want to risk damaging friendships, or loosing respectability. I didn’t want to risk the punishment of my parent’s. If only he would give me freedom quietly, none of this would ever be an issue. So I didn’t take action on what God was calling me to do. I was starting to feel physically sick from the stress of guilt and hiding from my parents. I felt like I was getting ulcers. One day I was sitting at my computer. It had been weeks since the last time I had looked at pornography and I thought God had delivered me. But, like the Israelites during the years of the judges, I failed again. It was crushing. I felt like there was a million pounds on my chest and my heart was on fire. I broke down, right there at my desk. I couldn’t do it anymore. I had tears streaming down my face, sobbing without a trace of dignity. I was broken. So I finally gave in to what God was asking of me. I had to make a public confession and find accountability. So I did, in a bit of a desperate, kind of idiotic way. At the time I had a regular audience of my closest friends reading my blog on popular social networking site. In a brash decision, I typed up confession, and before I had a chance to think better about it, I submitted it. My darkest secret was now public information on the internet that anyone could read. It’s still there and you can read it any time you want. I’ve also copied it here. Um...i'm having a hard time starting this out, i know what i want to say but, let me tell you, this will probably be the hardest thing i have to write, ever. Hopefully God will give me a hand. '' i've struggled with sin for some time now. When i was younger it didn't so much bother me. i went about my business did what i want, and ignored what i wanted to. But as i've grown and matured and God has become a bigger part of my life, more and more things have been revealed to me and any action i take contrary to His truth results in my own physical responses to it. Nowadays, i don't just feel guilty, i FEEL guilt. and it stays that way, until i ask for repentance, again. And every time i think im free i find myself stepping back into the old habits and sins i try to break from, and every time i've been forgiven. This is not acceptable to me, i've been told to go and sin no more, and no more have i felt that than now. In the midst of more blessings than i can count ive taken what no less amounts to perfect grace and sent it flying back in the face of He who gave it. and i call myself a Christian!? i try to live so well on the outside, to not appear a hypocrite to those around me, to provide the best example possible to people as to how a Christian should live, but in the privacy of my own home the system breaks down. which is why i'm writing this in public, so that everyone i know can know who i am and how, with Gods help i'm trying to change. To anyone (and i know a few who may) who feels misled by who i am, please forgive me, please understand how hard this is for me, to have no excuse and no explanation to fall back on. So, here goes... i've struggled with pornography , probably since 17 or so. There have been many times that ive accepted Gods grace and redemption, sworn i would never turn back, and from henceforth would live in accordance with His will, yet given enough time i always fall back, i always break my ultimatums, i always lose to temptation, and i hate it. My spirit, my soul, hates the rest of me. Lately, i've grown so close to God, and every time i fall, i feel it. I feel so much pain in my heart, so much self pity, so much hatred for my actions. I feel undeserving of the forgiveness i've received and yet here i am feeling the profound presence of Gods love at the same time. With Him, i have come so close.. so close to purity and to freedom from myself. I have defeated temptation for the first time with His help, and assumed that my troubles were behind me. Yet today i stumbled again, and it's simply to much for me to bear. This blog, is the result. i'm sure i should have seen it some time ago. God has been telling me for ages that what i need in my life. what i need to fix this problem, is accountability. yet i've rejected His advice, prayed for strength to do it on my own, and continued sinning. Well, i'm done with that approach. i can't continue this life this way. the pain and exhaustion associated with it is too much. it's killing me. Be there for me people, please, i need it so much. Faith and hope in myself, in my own strength no longer exists. This will be done, from now on God's way, and God would have me ask for accountability. To those who believed in me, who thought perhaps i was some holy individual, some one to turn to for advice and wisdom, forgive me. Please know that in my weakness is Gods strength. In my flaws is a chance to see His grace. In my darkness is His light. i am nothing but for Him. And if you will see this, if you forgive me, if you will be there for me as i try to grow more towards Him, i will live as an example, as mirror, taking His light and projecting it out. And a window, taking His form, and letting it show through me. Thank you, that's all. It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever done. I felt like my chest was on fire the entire time I wrote it out. But when I hit enter, everything, in an instant, changed. I felt grace like I’ve never felt it before, and haven’t felt since. In that moment, I knew God had been faithful. I knew that he had done what he always promised to do if only I would obey. I was free. I still tear up a little bit, just writing about it. I was no longer a slave to this body of sin and death. That’s not the end of my story, believe it or not; it’s just the beginning, but…we’ll get there. So, how do you find freedom from pornography. How do you break the cycle of addiction? The truth of the matter is, I don’t know. I found my deliverance in an instant, but I suspect that the reality is, God works in different ways for different people. There are some, like me, who God will deliver in an instant in the face of faithfully responding to his call. There are other who will find deliverance through a long and strenuous fight. There is no universal panacea. But there are a couple of things that we can learn from my story, or from anyone’s story really. '''Finding Freedom' No matter that God calls you to. No matter the path you have to walk down, it’s going to require the willingness to be changed. This might mean changing what you do, but before that can happen, it requires a change of identity. In our lives we find our identity in a lot of places. For some, their identity is that they are a runner, or a baseball player, or a mother, or single, or in a relationship, or homosexual, or whatever. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We’re all a lot of things, and we do tend to identify with the big parts of our life. But the thing that’s critical is to start with our identity in God. As we work through this, keep in mind that so much of the Christian walk is a process, not an event. It doesn’t matter so much where you are in the process of this, as much as it matters that you’re moving forward. For many, addictions are not broken overnight, but that’s ok, so long as you’re moving closer to freedom, rather than farther away. There’s a lot to this, so let’s try to break this down. Our identity and forgiveness In the second lesson, we talked a lot about guilt, and how it can drive us away from God. It’s really easy to believe that our sins are unforgivable. That no person, much less a perfect God, would be able to handle hearing what we’ve done and then forgiving us. The first step to changing, to building your identity on God, rather than on the things around us, is to recognize that God has already put forgiveness on the table. He already sent Jesus Christ to die for your sins, which means, whether you want to believe it or not, everything you could possibly do has already been forgiven, it’s just a matter of you seeking repentance. You’ve probably heard something like this before, and if you are like me, it probably didn’t make a difference. But think about a few things here. First, when Christ was hanging on the cross, he asked his father to forgive the people who had put him there. Do you honestly think that you can out-sin these people? Do you really think that your addictions or sins are worse than literally crucifying the son of God? Secondly, I want to take a look at Isaiah. When he stood before God himself, he cried out “Woe is me. I am undone. For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the Lord.” The thing you have to remember is that, at the time, Isaiah was probably the holiest person in Israel at the time, but in the presence of God, he falls on his face. The same can be said of Daniel and Moses, Israel’s holiest men. This demonstrates something important. In the face of a perfect God, degrees of sin become irrelevant. Compared to someone who tells one lie, God is infinitely more holy, and for the person who has been addicted to pornography for year, or who has had sex before marriage, or who has engaged in homosexuality, God is infinitely more holy. Compared to God, we’re all on a level playing field. Finally, consider that if you had done something so wrong that God was not capable of forgiving you, that would mean that you had cornered Him, that you had outwitted the king of the universe, that you are more powerful than God. Let me assure you, that you are not capable of being more powerful than God. You cannot sin more than God can forgive. If you haven’t yet accepted the forgiveness Christ worked out on the cross, now’s a good time to do that. Take a minute and speak to God. Let him know that you’re here, you know you’ve sinned, and you can’t fix it on your own. But now what? In Hebrews it says “…he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” We’ve been forgiven, but that’s not the end of the story. And Identity in God While I’ve put identity after forgiveness, it’s important to realize that these two are big concepts and you may be addressing (or maybe God is addressing them in you) in any order, or at the same time. You are not on an assembly line, you’re on a potter’s wheel. Everything is being worked on as God sees fit. I had built an identity on appearing to be righteous. I sat in church an listened to sermons about how we need to be free from pornography and while I listened to them, I felt guilt, but I also knew that no one knew what I was struggling with. My friends and family thought that I was the good kid and had my spiritual life under control. This identity that was firmly entrenched in self righteousness kept me from responding to God’s call. Before I was even prepared to receive or understand God’s forgiveness, I had to be willing to break down this identity of self-righteousness I had built up. I had to be willing to be broken, and not only that, to be broken in front of a lot of other people; my reputation was at stake. But when you allow the identity you have constructed to be broken down, you allow a new identity to take shape. For me, this meant finding my pride in God, and not in my own righteousness. It meant that I had to accept the idea of losing friends, because it was God who gave me worth, not the admiration of others. What might this mean for you? What is it that you have built your life on that is keeping you in pornography or keeping you from responding to God? For some, this might be a fear of being single and living a celibate life. If you live your life with this identity that finds worth in being the object of someone’s affection, then pornography, a fantasy where your desires are always fulfilled, will be a very alluring means of meeting that identity. But the true identity that needs to be brought to light, is that in Christ, you are the object of affection, you are loved, and you are desired. This is only one example, there could be any number of things providing a stumbling block between you and freedom. Why is this important? For a couple of reasons. First, building your identity on God allows you to see the truth of yourself: that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You never know the need for forgiveness if you have built an identity around the idea that what you’re doing isn’t really that bad. But also, think about people whose identity is their kids, or their relationship, or their favorite hobby or sport. When the kids leave and move out, or the relationship ends, or they injure their arm and can’t play baseball anymore, their world comes crashing down around them and their identity is shaken. And when given the chance, people will rail against letting go of those things they find their identity in. They will fight desperately, to the detriment of their children, to prevent being distanced from them. They will stay in unhealthy relationships, because they find acceptance in the other person. The beauty in building your identity on God, is that he will never fail you. He cannot be lost or broken; he cannot disappoint you, dump you, or grow up and move out of you house. But what’s more, when you have an identity firmly based on God, everything else is expendable. You can let go of unhealthy relationships because you don’t base your self esteem on them. You can afford to lose your money, because your provision is from God. You can respond to his call. Why does any of this matter? Oh, we’ll get there. But for the moment I want to say that this is what it took to bring me to responding to God’s call. Between being willing to give up my identity of righteousness, and my selfish desires, and recognize God’s forgiveness, I repented, made a public confession, and found freedom. This is not the way things work in every case, but it’s what it took for me. Category:Blog posts